A Signaller’s Story

Introduction

In May 2019 Lynley Ward asked the Post Newspapers to put her in touch with Shannon Lovelady, as she had read her WWI columns in the Post (2014-2018) and wanted advice on her great grand uncle’s WWI documents.

Lynley showed her the eight tiny notebooks of Herbert Frank Charles ‘Bert’ Turner and Shannon immediately recognised they were extraordinary. Meticulously detailed, each one had been mailed back to Bert’s mother when complete, the last finishing as he embarked on leave for ‘Blighty’. Shortly after returning from this leave he received a severe shrapnel wound to the head, which was his ticket home.

Bert’s daughter, Leita Bell, subsequently kept her father’s diaries safe. When she died in October 2018, aged 94, her wishes were that they be given to the Battye Library; but the family worried they might languish in a box. As we have done before, Shannon offered the Museum of Perth team to digitize, transcribe and research these precious diaries, thereby adding a lot more significance. The family could then gift them to the Battye Library, as Leita wanted, along with the transcript.

A paper time machine

That day Shannon hand-picked the first people on ‘the Turner Diaries’ team, who set to digitising Bert’s tiny notebooks and transcribing his scrawl. Seeing his early interest and commitment she asked Matthew Willemsen to take the lead, and proudly watched as he took flight in management of this wonderful project. The team discovered Bert’s wonderful chronicle of his daily life during the Great War; from Fremantle with the 11th Battalion in 1915, to France with the 51st in 1916, and the 4th Division Signals Company in 1918. He witnessed the taking of Leane’s Trench at Gallipoli, and the Battles of Messines and the Somme on the Western Front, while snatching sleep despite biting louse, and dodging ‘iron rations’ that were, at times, a little too close for comfort. The value of these kinds of accounts to historians is in the wealth of primary source information and, as Matt said at one point, these tiny notebooks equate to a paper time machine.

It was apparent these diaries should become a book, on which Matt, Shannon, and others have worked, throughout Covid. Matt searched Great War collections from obscure to the most comprehensive in the world, finding the perfect images to complement Bert’s words and illustrate the objects, events and places he described in such detail. Shannon advised, identified the people mentioned, researched the family, wrote the biography, the foreword, and many of the footnotes, which provide greater historical context and detail about the people Bert knew and encountered, and taught others to do the same, resulting in the extraordinary book ‘A Signaller’s Story’.

A Signaller’s Story: the Book

Project Leader, Graphic Design Matthew Willemsen
Digitised by Quentin Evans and Matthew Willemsen
Transcribers Natalie White, Jessica Snow, Quentin Evans, Sook Cheng Murtagh, Lynette Mobilia-Martini and Shang Jiang
Researchers Shannon Lovelady, Bev Sinclair, Axelle de Taille, Victoria Bird

A Signaller’s Story: the Exhibition

Co-Curators Shannon Lovelady, Reece Harley, Matthew Willemsen
Graphic Design David Cherrin

Our thanks to exhibition contributors:
Lynley Ward and the Turner family
Stephen Sinclair
Army Museum of Western Australia
Jane Greenwood
Derek Rea
Jon Readhead